Blacken mentions at the end of the Episode 6 how there weren't really any great topics. That pretty much nails it. Kinda gaming downtime right now, but the episode was entertaining nonetheless. Good work.

Don't fret, there were talks of a Dwarf Fortress-themed cast due to the hilarity inherent in Mortus's hands-off management approach and my complete lack of experience (I'm just learning the ins and outs of the interface this week, having never played before). Blacken is a self-proclaimed expert, so we'd have to give him some kind of handicap for his super leet knowledge like playing with the monitor off or no sustinence allowed or something. Or maybe any dwarf that excels at anything must be killed as a suspect of witchcraft. There were even vague mutterings of a new succession game or multi-succession game for amateurs to ensure plenty of magic happens.

The interest is there, we're just not 100% sure what we're going to do with it yet.

Beyond that fact, how fun could it possibly be watching a bunch of ASCII characters moving around a screen on a video?

I was gonna mention that, but I didn't know if the texture packs made the game watchable. I've only tried it vanilla. That's why most of the succession game stories are long text logs with a couple screenshots at the end to show the state of things. They have to be run vanilla due to texture packs tending to screw with the game, and all that ASCII mess is pretty much a foreign language to anyone who doesn't play regularly. You'd spend more time explaining why the happy face keeps swapping to a rotating line and then a semicolon than you would telling awesome stories of bravery, stupidity, and insanity.

I'm actually not travelling tomorrow, for the first time in nearly two months, so if you're looking for a guest that's actually a guest, let me know where and when to meet you on Mumble and I'll be there.

This week on As The GESC Turns, because nothing remotely interesting is happening in the world of games we decided to try something different. Each of us fired up Dwarf Fortress and attempted to live-play a fortress while on the chat. It is terrible and I hope you all enjoy it.

Also, is it Griffen poo as in feces, or like Snuggle pooh? Always confused me.

The origin of my handle is a long and complicated story, fraught with peril and betrayal. There can be only one, and mine was ripped from the quivering flesh of its previous owner as he lay dying.

Spoiler: show

I used to go by Grif, but as you can imagine a simple four letter handle is often taken by the time you get to a game, even when you get in on launch day. Friends in an MMO I used to play would call me Griffypoo as a pet name, so I appropriated the last five letters as my own. It's never taken because it sounds so stupid. When I got here I made an account with that handle, but quickly forgot both my password and the e-mail address I used to create it. I had to create a new account, and rather than appending numbers (pet peeve), I spelled out a lazy pronunciation of the "y" sound as "eh", thus, "Griff-eh-poo".

You can all scoot back from the edges of your seats now. I know it was a lot of excitement to bear all at once.

Podcast has been belatedly recorded. Had to push it back due to Blacken being Mr. High'n'mighty and spending time at PAX instead of recording with us. On a plus note, a 4th person has been added to the mix. So now it's not just me and Blacken talking nonsensical while Griff slowly draws the spork across his wrist.

The last podcast actually motivated me to play Dwarf Fortress again, after my previous experience which was quite similar to Casey's in that I had no fucking clue what the hell was going on or even how to navigate the menus.

The last podcast actually motivated me to play Dwarf Fortress again, after my previous experience which was quite similar to Casey's in that I had no fucking clue what the hell was going on or even how to navigate the menus.

Things are going much better this time around.

Well if that's the case, then this podcast will motivate you to test all your smoke detectors!

Podcast has been belatedly recorded. Had to push it back due to Blacken being Mr. High'n'mighty and spending time at PAX instead of recording with us. On a plus note, a 4th person has been added to the mix. So now it's not just me and Blacken talking nonsensical while Griff slowly draws the spork across his wrist.

What, are you going to make us actually listen to it to find out who it is?

I miss ghost; none of you old-timers have any youthful enthusiasm left (though Mortus is left with some Santa-like jollyness).

Then clearly you're doing things wrong. I don't know much about Dwarf Fortress, but what I do know is things aren't supposed to go well.

At least that's what I keep telling myself.

You have to take this statement with a grain of salt. They are going much better than the last time I tried the game, where I couldn't even figure out how to make the guys dig a hole in the ground. So, compared to that they have done OK. At this point they are both starving and dying of thirst, in addition to going crazy, killing each other and their merchant visitors, and dealing with kobold thieves lurking around. I did have one of my dwarves slink off into the corner and construct an artifact, though.

You know what? I think this one turned out really well. I'm not even gonna argue the thread title change, blame away. This one's all me. Send your donations and first borns to me, because I deserve 100% of the credit.